I found the video that Chris Kaleiki posted about why he left Blizzard very insightful. He pretty clearly still cares about Blizzard and WoW even though he is moving on in his career.
I think a lot of people agree that community is a big part of the game, and that there are many that feel that something is off about it now compared to in the past. So, two things he said about that struck me as summing up the strange thing about community in an MMO (starting at around the 7 minute mark of the video):
1.) The decline of the guild is an issue, where you needed the “interdependence” to be “successful.” Although it can feel restrictive, it creates community. He feels that the need for interdependence stood at odds with wanting to play solo or needing other players to achieve goals.
2.) The story: The main characters (i.e. NPCs) and their dramas “soak up a lot of air in the game,” as opposed to the players being the source of the drama. He then gives a quite literal example of this, stating how his guild in classic gets a lot of heat for preventing other players from resetting the Onyxia buff. He states it “really pisses off a lot of players.” So, he isn’t necessarily meaning story based drama, but real life drama between players, and that the two feel rather mutually exclusive.
There’s a ton to unpack there, but this is really the meat of the issue in the MMO. It really shows how there are two, very different ways of approaching community in the game world. It kind of boils down to means vs. ends and how that determines what you deem “success.”
On the one hand, in his first statement, community/interdependence is the means to gain success, and that success is inferred to be in game ends. Downing a boss, winning a BG, winning an arena match, etc. all have the common feature of being an in game goal that a community can work towards together. In PvP, yes, there are winners and losers, but the wins and losses are in the game and are in game functions.
On the other hand, in his second statement, community/interdependence is used to essentially gain out of game ends and reach out of game goals. The focus is using community as a vehicle to gain a reaction from another player, which is really an out of game end. The focus is on how the other players feel (i.e. “pissing them off”) rather than an in game goal.
The thing is, both of those are accomplished or made more “fun” in an MMO setting because of community, but the ends are a lot of times entirely opposed to one another. It is probably best summed up by saying that there is opposition between players that use community primarily as a means to advance character related ends and those that use community as a means to advance player related ends.
We’re seeing this play out this very moment. Isn’t that largely the issue with the zombie invasion? One side largely sees it as disruptive to their in game ends, the other side sees it as an in game means to reach their personal ends.
Sorry, I know that was long. I honestly just find that interplay fascinating. The more I think about it (without attaching negative words to either playstyle), it feels like a lot of things boil down to whether you ostensibly want to play with the fourth wall broken, or enjoy playing while it’s contained within four walls.
/wall of text
